WALL-E has a mission in his construction. He is to clean, collect, and compress. As the last active robot on Earth, WALL-E finds himself alone in the world with only a cockroach as his friend. When a robot known as EVE lands in WALL-E’s city, she discovers organic plant life in WALL-E’s possession and sets a chain of events in motion that will change both robots forever.

Directed by Andrew Stanton, WALL-E is a Pixar animated film following their hit film Ratatouille in 2007. The movie was released to great critical acclaim and the movie won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature with nominations for Best Original Score, Best Original Song (“Down to Earth”), Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Original Screenplay.

Unfortunately for humanity, WALL-E’s cockroach carries disease that can wipe them out

I am fine with Pixar films, but I do not love Pixar films like some. WALL-E is one of Pixar’s stronger films, but like Up, I feel it could have been a much better film.

I love the first thirty minutes or so of WALL-E. The movie is very daring at this point with very little dialogue and almost like an art film. The style of the shooting also indicates WALL-E could just be a computer generated character in a real world…like an R2-D2 or C-3PO who just happens to be computer generated. The romance between WALL-E and EVE is touching and fun…and then the humans come.

EVE, I wish it could just be you and me…seriously

The movie takes a big turn once Earth is left and falls into the rather predictable Pixar/Disney format. The adventure isn’t as strong as the romance between WALL-E and EVE, and it also loses the illusion of WALL-E existing in the real world.

WALL-E has a much smaller cast of voice actors due to the story. Fred Willard appears as a human in the video playbacks. Pixar regular John Ratzenberger plays one of the fat humans changed by WALL-E and EVE’s love. Jeff Garlin plays the captain of the ship and Sigourney Weaver plays the computer of the ship…which many saw a riff on Mother from Alien. Mostly however, the film is driven by the computer generated beeps and sounds of WALL-E and EVE.

You fat slobs are ruining my movie!!!

As mentioned, WALL-E has some of the strongest animation…at the beginning. I love Fred Willard used as a real human in playbacks of the pre-disaster Earth and that is why the spaceship sequence is so disappointing. The ship’s control unit does have fun allusions to HAL 9000 of 2001: A Space Odyssey and there are other visual cues to other sci-fi films. The fat people don’t look like real people. They look like computer generated people who are fat. It loses the wonder created in the beginning.

WALL-E despite its flaws is a decent film…it just could have been a great film with a little work. There is too much pressure to make feature length films…something like Up and WALL-E would have made perfect half-hour or forty-five minute shorts…which put together could be one great movie. I wish Pixar and Disney would consider going back to their anthology format at some points. Pixar followed WALL-E with Up in 2009.

Follow me on Twitter @JPRoscoe76! Loves all things pop-culture especially if it has a bit of a counter-culture twist. Plays video games (basically from the start when a neighbor brought home an Atari 2600), comic loving (for almost 30 years), and a true critic of movies. Enjoys the art house but also isn't afraid to let in one or two popular movies at the same time.